Desert Tortoise Natural Area

California City Correctional Facility (CAC) is a secure facility owned by CoreCivic. It was formerly staffed and operated by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as a men's level II (low-medium) security prison. The facility was built on speculation, without any customer contract to fill it. Construction was completed in 1998. Beginning in 2006, it housed federal inmates for the U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The federal contract included daily transportation to the San Diego County Courthouse and Southern Nevada Correctional Center, and as-needed to JPATS-Victorville ("Con Air"). The per-diem rate in 2010 was $77.50 per prisoner, decreasing to $58.00 as the count increased. The federal use of the facility ended in 2013. In response to a federal order to reduce overcrowding at the state's prison facilities, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation started leasing the facility in 2013 for $28.5 million yearly. Former guards, previously privately contracted, transferred to become state correctional officers after eight weeks of training. CAC was the only CDCR state prison under this arrangement; all other state prisons are both owned and operated by CDCR. All inmates were moved out by November 2023. The state terminated its lease so the prison will be effectively closed by March 2024.

California City is a city located in northern Antelope Valley in Kern County, California, United States. It is 100 miles (160 km) north of the city of Los Angeles, and the population was 14,973 at the 2020 census. Covering 203.63 square miles (527.4 km2), California City has the third-largest land area of any city in the state of California (behind San Diego and Los Angeles), and is the largest city in California, by land area, that is not a county seat. It is the 43rd-largest city in the United States by land area. Much of the city's residents are employed at Edwards Air Force Base, which is located 18 miles (29 km) southeast of the city. Other major employers are the California City Correctional Center (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation), Mojave Air and Space Port (and its flight test facility) and the Hyundai/Kia Proving Grounds, located in the rural southwestern part of the city. California City also has a park, a PGA golf course, and a municipal airport.

Cache Creek is an arroyo (dry wash) in the western Tehachapi Pass and Mojave Desert areas of Kern County, southern California. The arroyo's intermittent creek flows seasonally from watersheds in the northeastern Tehachapi Mountains and southeastern Sierra Nevada foothills, and from infrequent rains as flash floods, ending in the Mojave Desert.

Honda Proving Center of California (HPCC) is a test track established in 1990 and used primarily for testing Honda and Acura automobiles, although motorcycles are also tested there. HPCC is located near Cantil, California, in Kern County. Security is tight, and pilots flying near the track have reported seeing cars immediately heading for cover as they got close to the facility.

California City Municipal Airport (FAA LID: L71) is located in the city of California City, in the Fremont Valley of Kern County, California.

Desert Spring is a former settlement in Kern County, California in the Fremont Valley, south of Red Rock Canyon State Park. It was located 1.5 miles (2.4 km) northeast of Cantil. The place, with natural springs, was important as a source of freshwater to the Native Americans, explorers, prospectors, and others in the Mojave Desert. Visitors included Joseph R. Walker in 1834, John C. Fremont in 1844, and migrants entering California in 1850 who had used the El Paso Range route. Later in the 19th century the water source was used by "ore freighters and prospectors". The site is now registered as California Historical Landmark #476. California Historical Landmark reads: NO. 476 DESERT SPRING - This spring was on an old Indian horse thief trail and later (1834) Joe Walker Trail. The famished Manly-Jayhawk Death Valley parties (1849-50) were revived here after coming from Indian Wells through Last Chance Canyon. This was also a station on the Nadeau Borax Freight Road.

The Beacon Solar Project is a photovoltaic power station in the northwestern Mojave Desert, near California City in eastern Kern County, California. Split into five phases, the combined Beacon solar facilities generate 250 MW of renewable energy for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). The five phases of the project, fully completed in December 2017, include a total of 903,434 individual solar photovoltaic modules, mounted onto Nextpower single-axis tracking systems. The Beacon Solar Project was originally proposed by NextEra Energy using parabolic trough mirrors as solar energy collectors for a solar thermal electric energy generation project. The solar thermal electric powerplant technology configuration raised significant concerns during the CEQA environmental permitting process. Among the many environmental concerns, the natural gas supply, the wastewater management and disposal, and the water supply during construction and during operation of the plant were concerns specific to the solar thermal technology. The project was reconfigured, simplified and rescoped to a photovoltaic technology, eliminating the solar thermal technology concerns, though significant other environmental concerns remained. LADWP acquired the entire project, including the land and the environmental permitting for the site in 2012 as photovoltaic technology, which gained economic advantages over solar thermal and other technologies as a result of rapidly decreasing costs of solar photovoltaic modules. LADWP contracted Hecate Energy to develop three phases of the project, for 162 MW, and SunEdison, to develop the other two phases, for 88 MW. SunEdison's stake in the project was later acquired by Capital Dynamics. Hecate Energy's stake in the project was acquired by sPower (Sustainable Power), and was completed by sPower, who was later acquired by AES. In October 2018, LADWP commissioned the Beacon Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), with 10 MWh/20 MW of storage to stabilize the energy sent to the grid by the solar panels.

Cantil (Spanish for "Stone Cliff") is an unincorporated community in Kern County, California. It is in the Fremont Valley of the western Mojave Desert.

Gypsite was a small community at the site of a mill in Kern County, California. It is located 3 miles (4.8 km) southwest of Saltdale, in the Fremont Valley of the Mojave Desert at an elevation of 1,959 feet (597 m). It is located near Koehn Lake south-southwest of Ridgecrest near Garlock, California.

North Edwards (formerly, Edgemont Acres and North Muroc) is a census-designated place (CDP) in Kern County, California. Situated in the Mojave Desert, North Edwards is located about 7.2 miles (11.6 km) north-east of Edwards Air Force Base, at an elevation of 2,293 feet (699 m). As of the 2020 census it had a population of 1,054.

Koehn Lake is a dry lake, and seasonally endorheic lake, in the Fremont Valley of the Mojave Desert, in eastern Kern County, California.

Balls 8 is a NASA Boeing NB-52B mothership which was retired in 2004 after almost 50 years of flying service with NASA. The aircraft is famous for dropping the X-15 aerospace research vehicle on 106 of the 199 X-15 program flights.